Half-way Houses of Civilisation
It has been said that there is evidence of the routes just indicated having been, in fact, those most used. It is upon these lines, and no others, that we find certain remarkable focuses of early culture disposed as half-way houses between the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilisations on the one hand, and continental Europe on the other. These are, in relation to the sea routes, first, the prehistoric Ægean civilisation, focused from the first in Crete, but extended to all isles and peninsulas of South-eastern Europe from Cyprus to Sardinia and Spain; and, secondly, the Phœnician, originated on the Syrian coast, but focused also at a later time at a second point much farther west—namely, on that Carthaginian projection, whence lay easy sea-ways to Sicily and Italy and all the western seas. Hard by the Egyptian land route lay this same Phœnician society; while all about its point of junction with the Euphrates road, on both its continuations north-westward, and on the northern road from Mesopotamia so soon as this had passed Euphrates, was established the singular but as yet little understood civilisation which we call Hittite. How early we may assume the latter’s existence in North Syria is still doubtful; but since the discoveries of Winckler at Boghaz Keui, there is little question that it was focused in prehistoric time in Northern Cappadocia, whence its influence seems to have radiated southward to the confines of Palestine, and westward to Lydia and almost the shore of the Ægean Sea. It is to this North Cappadocian region that the Tigris route from Assyria and Babylonia, which was afterwards the Persian “Royal Road,” tended. Among these civilisations the most important for our present purpose is the Ægean, because its geographical area touched at some point all the westward roads, whether by sea or land; and, moreover, because it is the one which actual evidence both dates from the remotest antiquity and most clearly proves to have been operative on Europe, especially on the most expansive of its early cultures, the Hellenic. The recent exploration of Crete, due in the main to Messrs. Arthur Evans and Federico Halbherr, has enhanced enormously the significance of the civilisation revealed to the modern world at Hissarlik and Mycenæ by the faith and fervour of Henry Schliemann.
Far-back Evidences of Culture
We are now assured of certain facts of much moment to our inquiry. Firstly, that this civilisation was developed originally from its rudest beginnings within the Ægean area itself. This is proved by evidence of the uninterrupted evolution of fabrics and decoration, especially in ceramic ware, produced at Cnossus from the dawn of the historic Hellenic period right back to Neolithic time. At various points in this long retrocession we can place the Cnossian culture in synchronic relation with the Egyptian by the presence both of Egyptian objects in the Ægean strata, and Ægean in the Egyptian. These points correspond with the highest developments respectively of the New, Middle, and Old Pharaonic Empires—moments at which we should naturally expect to find evidence of international communication. The earliest point indicated by these synchronisms lies possibly as far back as the First Dynasty, if certain vases, exported apparently from the Ægean as vehicles for colouring matter, and found by Dr. Petrie at Abydos, are accepted as of the remote date to which their discoverer attributed them; but in any case the contemporaneity of some part of the Old Empire period with the Ægean civilisation is assured, and that, moreover, when the latter was already far advanced beyond its rudest origins, as represented by the contents of the thick strata of yellow clay which underlie the earliest structures at Cnossus.
The Ægean Civilisation is Native
Thus is the indigenous origin of Ægean civilisation assured. So also is the independence of its after development. The typical Cretan pottery, known as the “Kamares” style and lineally descended from Neolithic ware, which attained, about the acme of the Pharaonic Middle Empire a perfection both of fabric and ornament worthy of the highest ceramic products of any age, remained absolutely distinct. The same independence characterises a later ceramic product of the Ægean, a glazed ware with monochrome decoration, which went into Egypt abundantly under the Eighteenth Dynasty, and especially when Amenhotep IV., “Khuenaten,” was reigning in his new capital at Tell-el-Amarna. Nor is Ægean art distinctive only in its humbler products. The frescoes, the plaster reliefs, the chased work in precious metals, the ivory carvings, and the gem intaglios of the Ægean area, of which Sir Charles Newton said thirty years ago that they were not to be confounded with products of any other glyptic art, show the development and retention of an individual naturalistic style—a style which reacted on the fresco paintings of Egypt itself under Khuenaten. Finally, to clinch the proof of its independence with the strongest possible argument, the Ægean civilisation, as soon as it became articulate, evolved for itself, in Crete at any rate, a system of writing, displayed to us on some thousands of surviving clay documents, which was purely its own, and cannot be interpreted by comparison with any other known script.
THESEION TEMPLE, ATHENS: DORIC ORDER OF ARCHITECTURE
The perfection of the Hellenic style, derived from Ægean architecture. 5th century B.C.